"Goldberg Variations The Goldberg Variations, BWV 988, are a work written for harpsichord by Johann Sebastian Bach, consisting of an aria and a set of 30 variations. First published in 1741, the work is one of the most important examples of variation form. They are named after Johann Gottlieb Goldberg, who may have been the first performer. The tale of how the variations came to be composed comes from an early biography of Bach by Johann Nikolaus Forkel: Forkel wrote his biography in 1802, more than 60 years after the events related, and its accuracy has been questioned. The lack"
"with Diverse Variations""—that is, ""The Goldberg Variations."" The scholar Peter Williams has discredited the story which links the work to Goldberg stating that J. S. Bach wrote the work for the Russian Ambassador Count Hermann Carl von Keyserlingk, who would ask his employee, Goldberg, to play variations for him to ward off insomnia. Williams instead has argued that J.S. Bach wrote the variations to provide a display piece for Friedemann. In 1746 Friedemann became organist of the Liebfrauenkirche at Halle. In 1751, Friedemann married Dorothea Elisabeth Georgi (1721–1791), who was 11 years his junior and who outlived him by seven"
"Johann Gottlieb Goldberg Johann Gottlieb Goldberg (; baptized 14 March 1727 – 13 April 1756) was a German virtuoso harpsichordist, organist, and composer of the late Baroque and early Classical period. He is best known for lending his name, as the probable original performer, to the renowned ""Goldberg Variations"" of J.S. Bach. Goldberg was born in Danzig (Gdańsk), Royal Prussia (a fief of the Crown of Poland), and was baptized there on March 14, 1727 at St. Mary's Church, Gdańsk. Little is known for certain about his childhood, other than that he was an exceptionally talented performer, attracting the attention"
"recorded no fewer than 21 versions of the introductory aria before being satisfied. Over the course of his career, Gould became more and more interested in the creative possibilities of the studio. Gould wrote the liner notes to the recording. Concluding his back-cover essay on the ""Goldberg Variations"", he wrote: ""It is, in short, music which observes neither end nor beginning, music with neither real climax nor real resolution, music which, like Baudelaire's lovers, 'rests lightly on the wings of the unchecked wind.' It has, then, unity through intuitive perception, unity born of craft and scrutiny, mellowed by mastery achieved,"
"de la musique"", Op. 30, which contained 24 sonatas for flute, violin, or recorder in all keys. In 1749, the year before Bach's death, Johann Gottlieb Goldberg, the inspiration for J.S. Bach's ""Goldberg Variations"", wrote his own 24 polonaises for keyboard, one in each of the major and minor keys. Other examples include works by John Wilson (1595–1674), Daniel Croner (1682), Christoph Graupner (1718), Johann Mattheson (1719), Friedrich Suppig (1722), and Johann David Heinichen (1683–1729). The following is an incomplete list of works of this type that have been written since the death of J.S. Bach. Even though there can"
"copies destroyed. The case was settled out of court. Jacques Loussier Jacques Loussier (born 26 October 1934) is a French pianist and composer. He is well known for his jazz interpretations in trio formation of many of Johann Sebastian Bach's works, such as in the ""Goldberg Variations"". Loussier started piano lessons aged ten, in Angers, and after three months he encountered his first J. S. Bach – the little G-minor Prelude. It was a piece he fell in love with, he has said, and he played it on 'tens, hundreds of times', sometimes adding a note, missing another, and so"
"technician who had worked in it. ""I was inspired,"" he continues ""by the fact that, aside from the artistry, how clean the audio system was."" Many celebrated musical artists from all genres of music used the 30th Street Studio for some of their most famous recordings. ""Bach: The Goldberg Variations"", the 1955 debut album of the Canadian classical pianist Glenn Gould, was recorded in the 30th Street Studio. It was an interpretation of Johann Sebastian Bach's ""Goldberg Variations"" (BWV 988), the work launched Gould's career as an international pianist, and became one of the best known piano recordings. On May"
"era, both originally written for harpsichord, are George Frideric Handel's ""The Harmonious Blacksmith"" set, and Johann Sebastian Bach's ""Goldberg Variations, BWV 988"". In the Classical era, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wrote a great number of variations, such as the first movement of his Piano Sonata in A, K. 331, or the finale of his Clarinet Quintet. Joseph Haydn specialized in sets of double variations, in which two related themes, usually minor and major, are presented and then varied in alternation; outstanding examples are the slow movement of his Symphony No. 103, the ""Drumroll"", and the Variations in F minor for piano,"
"Wanda Landowska Wanda Aleksandra Landowska (5 July 1879 – 16 August 1959) was a Polish-French harpsichordist whose performances, teaching, recordings, and writings played a large role in reviving the popularity of the harpsichord in the early 20th century. She was the first person to record Johann Sebastian Bach's ""Goldberg Variations"" on the harpsichord (1933). She became a naturalized French citizen in 1938. Landowska was born in Warsaw to Jewish parents. Her father was a lawyer, and her mother a linguist who translated Mark Twain into Polish. She began playing piano at the age of four, and studied at the Warsaw"
"Jacques Loussier Jacques Loussier (born 26 October 1934) is a French pianist and composer. He is well known for his jazz interpretations in trio formation of many of Johann Sebastian Bach's works, such as in the ""Goldberg Variations"". Loussier started piano lessons aged ten, in Angers, and after three months he encountered his first J. S. Bach – the little G-minor Prelude. It was a piece he fell in love with, he has said, and he played it on 'tens, hundreds of times', sometimes adding a note, missing another, and so changing a bit the spirit of the music. He"
"Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel The Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel, Op. 24, is a work for solo piano written by Johannes Brahms in 1861. It consists of a set of twenty-five variations and a concluding fugue, all based on a theme from George Frideric Handel's Harpsichord Suite No. 1 in B major, HWV 434. The great music writer Donald Tovey has ranked it among ""the half-dozen greatest sets of variations ever written"". Biographer Jan Swafford describes the ""Handel Variations"" as ""perhaps the finest set of piano variations since Beethoven"", adding, ""Besides a masterful"
"composer Rachel Laurin. Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel The Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel, Op. 24, is a work for solo piano written by Johannes Brahms in 1861. It consists of a set of twenty-five variations and a concluding fugue, all based on a theme from George Frideric Handel's Harpsichord Suite No. 1 in B major, HWV 434. The great music writer Donald Tovey has ranked it among ""the half-dozen greatest sets of variations ever written"". Biographer Jan Swafford describes the ""Handel Variations"" as ""perhaps the finest set of piano variations since Beethoven"", adding,"
"Johann Sebastian Bach, such as his recording of the ""Goldberg Variations"" made on a 1728 Christian Zell harpsichord. Following an academic career divided between UC Berkeley and Europe, Curtis devoted his time to performing dramatic music from Monteverdi to Mozart. As a student in the 1950s, he was the first modern harpsichordist to examine problems surrounding Louis Couperin's unmeasured preludes for harpsichord, to commission the first modern copy of a chitarrone and the first chromatic (split-key) harpsichord constructed in the 20th century. He also researched operas from the baroque and pre-baroque eras, using period instruments and authentic choreography. In the"
"""Goldberg Variations"" digitally and in stereo in the Columbia 30th Street Studio in New York City; it was the last album to be recorded in that studio before it closed. He largely abandoned the showmanship of the 1955 performance, choosing instead a more introspective interpretation with more calculated phrasing and ornamentation. For the 1981 version, Gould sought to unify the variations differently, through his choices of tempi: he played more of the repeats, and wanted to express proportional rhythmic relations between the variations. Arriving within a year of his death, the 1981 recording is popularly recognized as ""autumnal"", a symbolic"
"the piece, playing it in full or in part at many of his recitals. A new recording of the ""Goldberg Variations"", made in 1981, would be among his last albums, and one of only a few pieces he recorded twice in the studio. The 1981 record was one of CBS Masterworks' first digital recordings. The 1955 interpretation is highly energetic and often frenetic; the later is slower and more deliberate—Gould wanted to treat the aria and its 30 variations as a cohesive whole. Gould revered J.S. Bach, stating that the Baroque composer was ""first and last an architect, a constructor"
"more developed harpsichord writing by Buxtehude simply did not survive: in his writings, Johann Mattheson mentioned a cycle of seven suites by Buxtehude, depicting the nature of planets, but these pieces are lost. The several sets of arias with variations are, surprisingly, much more developed than the organ chorale variations. BuxWV 250 ""La Capricciosa"" may have inspired Bach's ""Goldberg Variations"" BWV 988: both have 32 variations (including the two arias of the Goldberg Variations); there are a number of similarities in the structure of individual movements; both include variations in forms of various dances; both are in G major; and"
"this position until his death. As the Russian ambassador to the imperial court in Vienna he was made an imperial count in 1744. Johann Sebastian Bach, a noted composer, is thought to have composed the Goldberg Variations for Count Keyserling as a sleep aid. The work takes its name from Johann Gottlieb Goldberg, a musician in the service of Count Keyserling. His son Heinrich Christian von Keyserling was the wealthiest aristocrat of Königsberg, was frequented by the likes of Immanuel Kant and Johann Gottfried Herder. His marriage to Caroline von Keyserling was childless. Hermann Karl's daughter Anna von Medem was"
"German composer Louis Spohr used the theme as the basis for a variation movement in his Octet in E major, Op. 32. The theme is referenced at the beginning of the finale of Francis Poulenc's ""Concert champêtre"". The Australian-born composer and pianist Percy Grainger based one of his most famous works on this melody. He first wrote his ""Variations on Handel's ‘The Harmonious Blacksmith’"" in 1911. Shortly after, he used the first sixteen bars of his set of variations to create one of his most beloved pieces, ""Handel in the Strand"". He wrote that the music “seemed to reflect both"
"Simone Dinnerstein Simone Dinnerstein (born September 18, 1972) is an American classical pianist who is noted for her self-financed recording of Johann Sebastian Bach's ""Goldberg Variations"", released in 2007. Simone Andréa Dinnerstein was born in New York, United States. She is the daughter of Renee and Simon Dinnerstein. She studied in the pre-college program at the Manhattan School of Music with Solomon Mikowsky. At age 15 she auditioned in London with Maria Curcio, a student of Artur Schnabel – on this trip she also met her future husband, Jeremy Greensmith – and at age 18 she dropped out of The"
"and revealed to us here, as so rarely in art, in the vision of subconscious design exulting upon a pinnacle of potency."" Gould commented in a 1959 interview with Alan Rich that he had begun to study the ""Goldberg Variations"" in about 1950, around the age of 17. It was one of the first works that he had learned ""entirely without [his] teacher"", and which he had ""made up [his] mind about relatively [early]"". He noted that his performance view of the ""Variations"" now involved slowing the piece down: ""[That] is about the only musical change that has gone on,"
"Blandine Verlet Blandine Verlet (born February 27, 1942 in Paris) is a harpsichordist and a harpsichord teacher. Born into a musical family, she was the seventh of ten children, and in 1957 gained admission to the Paris Conservatoire, studying piano and harpsichord. Having decided on her specialty, she studied harpsichord with Huguette Dreyfus in Paris, Ruggero Gerlin in Siena and Ralph Kirckpatrick in the US. A significant competition prize in Paris in 1963 led to engagements in Italy and West Germany. Verlet has been widely praised for her recordings of Bach, including the 'Goldberg Variations', but it is perhaps in"
"North and South America and Japan. From 1988 to 1990 he was harpsichordist in London Baroque, and from 1990 to 1993 he was a member of Collegium Musicum 90. He appears regularly with singer Emma Kirkby, violinist John Holloway and cellist and gambist Jaap ter Linden. He has recorded for Archiv Produktion (3rd harpsichord in Bach's 3- and 4-harpsichord concerti with The English Concert), harmonia mundi, Kontrapunkt and da capo and his recording of Bach's Goldberg Variations won him a ""Diapason d'Or"". He is the artistic director of Concerto Copenhagen, and appears regularly directing opera at the Royal Theatre in"
"poem. The composition was not performed again until 2011, when conductor James Allbritten presented it at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. Yo-Yo Ma performed Frazelle's music again in 1997, with the pianist Emanuel Ax. The “New Goldberg Variations” were commissioned by Robert and Judy Goldberg, who chose Frazelle, Richard Danielpour, Christopher Rouse, Peter Lieberson, Peter Schickele and John Corigliano to contribute new variations on Bach's original aria. The “Variations” premiered at Boston's Jordan Hall, with subsequent performances at Carnegie Hall and across the US and Canada. Jeffrey Kahane served as pianist at many of the venues."
"Twenty Variations in G major (Haydn) Twenty Variations in G major, Hob. XVII/2, was written in the 1760s by Joseph Haydn. In 1788/1789, Artaria published the ""Arietta con 12 Variazioni in A major"" (Twelve Variations in A major), which is an abridged version of the Twenty Variations in G major, and in a different key. There are two versions of these variations: Twenty Variations in G major and a shorter piece, Twelve Variations in A major, and are both referred to as Hob. XVII/2. This is due to the fact that Haydn wrote the Twenty Variations in 1765, but since"
"the set of preludes and fugues for harpsichord that would become his second book of ""The Well-Tempered Clavier"". From 1740 to 1748 Bach copied, transcribed, expanded and/or programmed music in an older polyphonic style (""stile antico""), by, among others, Palestrina (BNB I/P/2), Kerll (BWV 241), Torri (BWV Anh. 30), Bassani (BWV 1081), Gasparini (""Missa Canonica"") and Caldara (BWV 1082). Bach's own style shifted in the last decade of his life, showing an increased integration of polyphonic structures and canons, and other elements of the ""stile antico"". His fourth and last ""Clavier-Übung"" volume, the ""Goldberg Variations"", for two-manual harpsichord, contained nine"
"1950s. He also initiated a subscription series of solo recitals from 1932-1937. Each season's four or five recitals would cover often neglected works by Bach, Scarlatti, Haydn, Mozart, 18th-century Spanish composers, 20th-century French composers, and Stravinsky. Bach pieces included the complete inventions and sinfonias as well as the ""Goldberg Variations"", all of which would be later popularized by his pupil Glenn Gould. Guerrero performed in various chamber ensembles with musicians such as with Frank Blachford (violin), Leo Smith (cello), Harold Sumberg (violin), and Cornelius Ysselstyn (cello). For over a decade, he was also a member of the Five Piano Ensemble."
"November 30, 1877, with Nikolai Rubinstein conducting. This was perhaps the only hearing of the ""Variations"" as Tchaikovsky wrote the piece, until 1941, when it was played in Moscow without Fitzenhagen's by-then-standard emendations. The piece is scored for a reduced orchestra consisting of pairs of each of the four basic woodwind instruments, two horns and the usual strings, like the typical late 18th-century orchestra without trumpets or percussion. The piece is composed of a theme and eight variations (seven in Fitzenhagen's version), making up roughly 20 minutes of music. Part of the difficulty of the piece lies in this continuous"
"Galamian. The composers Gunther Schuller, Paul Ben-Haim and Carlos Surinach composed violin concertos for Zeitlin, who premiered them. Zeitlin was the first to record George Rochberg's Caprice Variations in their entirety. He was also a particular champion of the violin concerto of Arnold Schoenberg and recorded this work commercially for Deutsche Grammophon. Zeitlin taught for 45 years at the University of Rochester's Eastman School of Music, from 1967 until his death in 2012. He gave his final recital at Eastman just before his 90th birthday. During his time at Eastman, he, pianist Barry Snyder, and cellist Robert Sylvester founded the"
"29, 1981, a second version of the Goldberg Variations by Glenn Gould was recorded in this studio, a year before Gould's death. It was also the last recording session in the studio. Among Rudolf Serkin's legendary recordings, Beethoven's piano sonatas, nos. 1, 6, 12, 13, 16, 21 (Waldstein), 30, 31 and 32 were recorded there between 1967 and 1980. Vladimir Horowitz recorded his entire Masterworks (originally Columbia then Sony Classical) discography at the studio. Other noteworthy classical musicians having recorded in this place: Igor Stravinsky, Leonard Bernstein, Bruno Walter. Jazz trumpeter Miles Davis recorded almost exclusively at the 30th Street"
"them directly with her fingernails. Referring to the Goldberg Variations recording, critic Benjamin Katz writes, ""Ohnishi performs on a harpsichord built by Marc Ducomet, based on a Ruckers harpsichord that underwent a grand ravalment (a 17th Century instrument rebuilt to suit 18th Century tastes and repertoire). This fine instrument may have been the inspiration for some of Ohnishi's very French-sounding playing. She casts the 13th variation as a sensual French dance, complete with ports de voix (an appoggiatura-like ornament). Her 7th variation is played as a true canarie-gigue, a French dance with a snappy rhythm. Ohnishi's performance is admirably balanced."
"Variation sets have also been composed by notable twentieth-century composers, including Sergei Rachmaninoff (""Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini"" for piano and orchestra, and his variations for solo piano on themes by Chopin and Corelli), Charles Ives (""Variations on ""America"""", 1891), Ernő Dohnányi (Variations on a Nursery Tune for piano and orchestra, Op. 25, 1914), Arnold Schoenberg (Variations for Orchestra, Op. 31, and Theme and Variations, Opp. 43a and 43b), Igor Stravinsky (""Pulcinella"": XV Gavotta con due variazioni, 1920; Octet: II Tema con variazioni, 1922; ""Ebony Concerto"": III, 1945; and ""Variations: Aldous Huxley in memoriam"", 1963–64), Anton Webern (Variations, Op."
"Johann Nikolaus Forkel, which involved the composition of a set of variations by Bach to help the insomniac Count Keyserlingk pass sleepless nights. Keyserlingk's favorite chamber harpsichordist was the 14-year-old Goldberg, whose technical accomplishments were so spectacular that they made it possible for him to perform a work of such extraordinary difficulty. According to Forkel, writing in 1802, sixty years after the event: The accuracy of the story recounted by Forkel has often been questioned, and indeed may have been embellished by Bach's enthusiastic biographer. However Goldberg was known as a virtuoso performer at the time, was in the employ"
"Variations on an original theme in E-flat major (Beethoven) The Variations in E-flat major piano trio, Op. 44, by Ludwig van Beethoven, is a series of fourteen variations on a theme, written for piano, violin and cello. Although this may be one of Beethoven's early works (written at around age 22) it was assigned its opus number when it was published by Hoffmeister in Leipzig, more than a decade after Beethoven began writing it. Following common practice at the time, in this work Beethoven incorporated variations on popular themes from opera, notably from ' (literally translated as ""The Red Cap""),"